Spotify is publishing its annual “Loud & Clear” report, highlighting the success of Canadian artists on the platform, with notable trends emerging in Francophone music, female representation and independent artists.
The report showed that Francophone music is experiencing a surge on Spotify, with global royalties (payments made to the original creators or owners of intellectual property) increasing by 15% compared to 2023. More than one-sixth of Spotify users globally engaged with French music or podcasts on the platform in the 2023 around the world. Québécois artist Patrick Watson’s hit track Je te laisserai des mots was the most popular Francophone song on the platform in 2024, achieving a historic milestone as the first French-language track to surpass one billion streams.
Francophone audiobooks are also booming. After 100 days of French-language audiobooks being available in Québec, the platform grew listenership of its French titles on premium by 2,461%, with three of the top five most listened to audiobooks in Québec being French. Canada was amongst the first five markets in the world to be able to access audiobooks in Spotify premium in 2024, according to the company.
Overall, while Toronto might claim the crown for the most listens between 2014-2024, British Columbians were far ahead in plays of audio content on a per capita basis. Music fans in Vancouver and Victoria notched up an average of 45k unique tracks per person in the 10-year period to 2024, compared to 28k in Montreal, 22k in Toronto, 18k in Calgary and 11k in Ottawa.
Spotify also revealed that Canadian women are dominating the music scene, with more than 40% of the country’s top-earning artists (those who broke the $1 million mark in 2024) being female or part of mixed-gender groups. That representation earns Canada a top spot globally among markets with the highest proportion of female artists generating significant revenue on the streamer, says the company.
From 2014 to 2024, Canadians upped their listens of tracks by women artists by a whopping 1,475%, racking up more than 104 billion streams along the way.
The study also showed that in 2024, 92% of royalties earned by Canadian artists on Spotify came from listeners outside of Canada. With 15 million hours of Canadian music streamed daily worldwide, Canadian artists are also featured on 2.4 billion user playlists globally, showcasing their global appeal.
Independent Canadian artists and labels accounted for nearly 40% of all royalties generated by Canadian artists on the platform in 2024. Canadian artists generated nearly $460 million CAD in royalties from the streamer alone in 2024. The number of artists generating more than $50k, $100k, $500k and $1 million CAD per year in revenue on Spotify has also doubled across every level since 2017.
In particular, several music genres saw significant growth in 2024, including Seresta from Brazil, which surged by 332%; Afro House, which rose by 295%, Reggaeton Chileno, which jumped by 223%, and Malayalam Hip-hop, which climbed by 216%.
